Have none of my fellow USns noticed that in the US, the long 'u' sound, correctly pronounced like 'yew' with the initial 'y' sound, as in 'during' as discussed, is slowly being displaced by the 'oo' sound? Except among those who are careful of their pronunciation, 'new' and 'knew' are now pronounced 'noo', as in Noo Yawk. This goes for any words with the long 'u' sound, whether they are spelled with 'u' or with 'ew'. Next I would expect to hear a she sheep called an 'oo', but that practically no one uses the word 'ewe' outside of crossword puzzles. So we don't see a big problem with 'during, jury', etc -- they are being pronounced 'dooring', 'joory', etc. It's a trend I hate; I think the 'oo' sound in place of the long 'u' is inelegant, to say the least.